Brooklyn man mailed ashes of person he's never met in bizarre mishap
BROOKLYN, New York (WABC) -- A man from Brooklyn was shocked when he got a package in the mail containing the ashes of someone he's never met.
At his Brooklyn brownstone, Hamilton Leithauser went to his mailbox this week, and found a white, U.S. Postal Service box addressed, he says, only to "current resident."
"I open it up and it said the cremated remains of this guy from October 17, 2017," Leithauser said.
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The box contained the ashes of a man who died over five years ago and had been cremated. Leithauser did not know the man and he called the funeral home to tell them they had made a mistake.
"When I called, they were extremely rude," Leithauser said. "I think he said, 'don't you examine your packages before you open them,' and I said, 'don't you check the address before you mail someone's dead body,' I think that's the last thing I said and then he hung up on me."
But the funeral home did send someone to reclaim the ashes.
"She was so angry, from the moment I saw her she was like, 'this is a dead body we're talking about,' and I was like 'yeah, you mailed it to me,'" Leithauser said.
Eyewitness News tried to speak with someone from the funeral home to find out what went wrong, how the ashes got mailed to the wrong address and what will happen to them now, but the person inside said that the owner could not be reached.
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